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TIMESTAMPS

Industrialized nations have been producing nuclear waste from both civilian and military power generation and from weapons production since the 1940's. The United States was the first country to start dumping nuclear waste at sea in 1946, and until the advent of the environmental movement in the 1970's, many nuclear powers dumped radioactive waste into the oceans. [1] The Cold War also left a nuclear legacy on the seafloor in the form of reactors and warheads, many of them from lost or scuttled submarines. Currently, dumping of nuclear waste is forbidden by international law. However, the difficulty in finding a place to dispose of nuclear waste has kept some discussion alive of the possibility of someday using the deep ocean seabed as a repository for spent nuclear fuel.

The Legality of Dumping of Nuclear Waste

The London Dumping Convention (LDC) first met in 1972 and prohibited dumping of high level radioactive waste, and then adopted a voluntary moratorium on dumping of low and intermediate level nuclear waste in 1983 at the LDC's seventh meeting. [2] A decade later in 1993, the delegates to the sixteenth meeting of the LDC made the ban on the dumping of nuclear material at sea formal, permanent, and binding. [3] The United States opposed the ban until a widely-publicized event in which Russia dumped 237,000 gallons of low level waste (LLW) into the Sea of Japan. [4] It was an “open secret” that Russia had been dumping LLW into the ocean for thirty years, but it was only after Greenpeace publicized the event in the United States that the Clinton administration overruled the objections of the Navy and supported the LDC's permanent ban. [5] As was allowed by the LDC, Russia filed an objection to the resolution, legally permitting it to continue dumping LLW into the oceans. [6] Russia has since stopped deliberately dumping waste into the Sea of Japan, although this appears to be because Japan has been funding land-based disposal of Russian nuclear waste rather than because the action is forbidden under the LDC. [7]

The Third United Nations Law of the Sea Conference (UNCLOSIII), which met between 1973 and 1982, adopted the dumping definition of the LDC almost verbatim. [8] The language of the treaty exhorts signatories to “minimize to the fullest possible extent… the release of toxic, harmful or noxious substances, especially those which are persistent.” [9] Although 145 nations have ratified UNCLOSIII, The United States is not among them; however, as of April 2004, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee unanimously recommended ratification and the Bush administration was supporting full Senate ratification, which makes it seem likely to occur soon. [10]

Subseabed Disposal

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Subseabed disposal (SSD) is the most promising alternative to the politically difficult process of disposing of nuclear waste on land. [11] There are large parts of the seafloor in both the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans that have several characteristics that make them attractive for the disposal of nuclear waste: they are in the center of tectonic plates and hence very seismically stable; their top layer is comprised of several hundred meters of clays that “resemble dark chocolate and have the consistency of peanut butter” which would bond with radionucleotides and allow them to spread at a very slow rate; and they are far from any human activity, and it is likely they have no biological activity beyond a meter deep. [12] Further studies would be necessary, [13] but several authors think that it is likely that the United States will resort to SSD in the not too distant future. [14]

Despite what seems to be cautious optimism by most commentators about the feasibility of SSD, it is forbidden by international law. Under the original 1972 LDC text, it was not clear as to whether SSD was permitted or not. [15] At the Thirteenth Consultative Meeting of the LDC, in November of 1990, the contracting parties approved a proposal by Spain (the “Spanish Resolution”) that clearly defined SSD as “dumping,” and hence forbidden. [16] The United States, Britain, France and the Soviet Union voted against the proposal and have indicated that while they consider the Spanish Resolution non-binding, they will comply voluntarily for the time being. [17] UNCLOSIII also has some provisions that can be interpreted as applying to subseabed disposal. However, they are less specific than the LDC, are more targeted at the mining of the seabed than at disposal, and are more precatory statements of stewardship than binding resolutions. [18]

Loss of Military Material

Throughout the Cold War, both the Soviet and American militaries lost or intentionally sank nuclear weapons and reactors at sea. Most often these were on sunken submarines, but at least the United States lost a few planes with nuclear weapons, and a few planes dropped weapons into the sea. [19] By some estimates there are at least 50 nuclear weapons on the seafloor; [20] certainly there are at least 32 in the Atlantic from when a Russian submarine, the K-219, sank in the Atlantic Ocean. [21]

Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of the Cold War's nuclear legacy is the nuclear waste of the Russian Navy. In May of 1993, Russia surprised the world with its openness in issuing the “ Yablokov Report,” which gave detailed information on the history and status of Russia's nuclear waste problem. The report indicated that the Soviet Union had dumped over 2.5 million curies of radioactive waste into the Arctic Ocean and other marine environments, including 18 nuclear reactors, and that there were more than 10 million curies stored aboard vessels in Murmansk Harbor. [22] Another estimate puts the number as high as 107 million curies for the Russian nuclear submarine complex. [23] The future of this waste is unclear, and there is concern that some of the waste is on ships that may rust and sink before the waste can be properly processed, such as the Russian submarine K-159 that sank with 800 kilograms of spent nuclear fuel while being towed with pontoons attached to parts of the hull that were “in some places was as weak as foil.” [24]

Questions for the Future

Margaret Thatcher once said, “ No generation has a freehold on this earth. All we have is a life tenancy – with a full repairing lease.” [25] Thatcher's sentiment, and the moratorium on dumping from the London Convention, are derived from the precautionary principle: for actions that may have negative consequences in the long term, it is best to be conservative. There is perhaps no area where this applies more than with nuclear waste. In some cases, like sunken nuclear submarines, the time for precaution is past and the question is of balancing the cost and risk of bringing them to the surface as compared to leaving them where they lie, possibly slowly leaking radionucleides into their environment. For the spent nuclear fuel accumulated – and still accumulating – worldwide, the question is one of weighing the current risks of (possibly inadequate) temporary disposal on land against the risks of a more permanent solution under the seafloor.

1972
Convention on the Prevention of Marine Pollution by Dumping
of Wastes and Other Matter - 1996 Protocol (.pdf)

Richard J. Ansson, Jr., The North American Agreement on Environmental Protection and the Arctic Council Agreement: Will These Multinational Agreements Adequately Protect the Environment? 29 Cal. W. Int'l L.J. 101 (1998)

U. S. Nuclear Weapons Accidents, by Jaya Tiwari and Cleve J. Gray. A good listing by two graduate students, separated into indicents confirmed by two (or one governmental) source and those that are unconfirmed.

The CNN report on "Broken Arrows" shows the weapons lost as reported by the DoD in 1981. It also has some information unavailable elsewhere, such as the amount of uranium scattered over the St. Lawrence seaway in 1950.